3.28.2009

The tipping dilemma

See, one of the bad things about being college students is that at restaurants and such, we generally get lousy service.

Why, you ask?

Well, from my experience (and this is NOT true of everyone and everywhere), college kids give tiny tips, waiters and waitresses usually assume we'll give them tiny tips, so they don't really treat us all that well. So in turn, we give them tiny tips.

It's a vicious cycle.

I usually try to break that--tipping generously for okay service, just to show them that college kids CAN tip well. But sometimes, like what happened last night, I just refuse.

Last night my roomies and I went to a fairly nice restaurant (well, each of our entrees was $10-12, we consider that nice!). We saw our waiter for a grand total of 32 seconds. Seriously. After waiting 10 minutes in a non-crowded restaurant, he finally came over to take our orders. That was it.

Somebody else delivered the food, which is the norm at that restaurant, but our waiter didn't even come back to fill up drinks for us. We had to stop other waiters to ask for bread (which they usually bring out free) and for our bill. It wasn't like the waiter disappeared--he had come several times to the tables around us. But he skimped out on the college kids.

My meal was $11, and I gave him a dollar tip. If he had given me good service, I would have given him $3. It's just a stinky cycle to be stuck in, and I know there are college kids out there who DO give tiny tips, but attn: servers, my friends and I aren't like that!

It may have been just a dollar, but it was still 10%. That's something. I feel the same way. Call me needy, but I don't like having to ask for a water refill. So sometimes I tip a little less than I probably should. My friend always makes me look like a cheap ass because she double tips even if it's bad service, because she used to be a waitress.

Yeah, I've had some pretty bad service (and it's always at Chili's...) so we once didn't give our waitress a tip at all since she never gave us refills on our drinks or asked how our meal was or anything. We literally put the drinks, sucked down to the last drop, on the edge of the table and had to ASK for refills. So she didn't get any tip at all. And I didn't feel bad at all for it.

You give good service, you get a good tip. You give bad service, you get a bad tip. That's just how it works. :)